Toujours Provence or Steel Pier Atlantic City

Toujours Provence

Author: Peter Mayl

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Taking up where his beloved A Year in Provence leaves off, Peter Mayle offers us another funny, beautifully (and deliciously) evocative book about life in Provence. With tales only one who lives there could know—of finding gold coins while digging in the garden, of indulging in sumptuous feasts at truck stops—and with characters introduced with great affection and wit—the gendarme fallen from grace, the summer visitors ever trying the patience of even the most genial Provençaux, the straightforward dog "Boy"—Toujours Provence is a heart-warming portrait of a place where, if you can't quite "get away from it all," you can surely have a very good time trying.

Publishers Weekly

British author Mayle shares his adventures in France's Midi in an enchanting book that stayed on PW 's hardcover bestseller list for 19 weeks. His new book, Acquired Tastes , will be published by Bantam in May. (June)

Library Journal

For fans of his A Year in Provence ( LJ 4/1/90; ``Best Books of 1990,'' LJ 1/91), Mayle is back with more amusing tales of ``la vie en rose'' in the south of France. Writing with affectionate humor, he recounts such adventures as sneaking through British customs with a suitcase full of expensive truffles and digging for gold coins in his backyard with his wily and greedy neighbor. He encounters truly French eccentrics like Regis, the athlete gourmet who wears a track suit to enjoy his meals, and the ambitious Monsieur Salques, the choirmaster of the singing toads of St. Panteleon who plans to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution with an amphibian rendition of the ``Marseillaise.'' Describing a memorable 50th-birthday picnic that ends in a sudden rainstorm, Mayle conjures up hilarious images in vivid prose: ``Showing through a pair of once-white, once-opaque trousers, red-lettered knickers wished us all Merry Xmas.'' Recommended for all travel collections.-- Wilda Williams, ``Library Journal''

Look this: The Best Midwest Restaurant Cooking or Hors DOeuvres Everybody Loves II

Steel Pier, Atlantic City: Showplace of the Nation

Author: Steve Liebowitz

It was aptly called the "Showplace of the Nation" and it was all that and more.

For much of the 20th century Steel Pier in Atlantic City was the center of American entertainment on the East Coast.

Nearly every big-name entertainer - from John Philip Sousa and his band to Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra and the Rolling Stones - played there. And nearly every form of entertainment that could be imagined took place at Steel Pier: high wire acts, people being shot out of cannons, the Diving Bell that took you to the sea floor.

There was the Marine Ballroom, and there was rock and roll. There were circus-like animal acts - "Rex The Wonder Dog," a 70-ton Whale, Fortune-Telling Parakeets, Wild Animal Babies, and Boxing Cats.

Steel Pier was an incredible combination of Broadway, Miami, Las Vegas, Hollywood, Barnum and Bailey, and a state fair - "All For One Low Admission." Crowds were drawn from the entire country. The renown of Steel Pier was so great that A-list performers chose the Pier over other venues.

This all-in-one entertainment Mecca, novel in its day, has never been matched, not even at latter-day theme parks. Where else could you take the entire family for a day and see the World of Tomorrow, Sousa and his band, a bear on a bicycle, the High Diving Horses, take a ride below the sea, spend the evening in the marine ballroom, and see a movie - all for one ticket? It was a colossal offering of escape, popular culture, fun and fantasy - experienced on a great pier reaching out into the sea.

Author Steve Liebowitz begins with a brief history of seaside entertainment piers, and competing piers in Atlantic City (such as Million Dollar,Heinz, and Steeplechase) and carries us through incarnations of Steel Pier into the late 20th century.

Filled with 227 photographs and other images (many in color), this large-format book chronicles the rise of one of America's most remarkable entertainment venues - "A Vacation In Itself," as the advertising slogan went. For three-quarters of the last century there was nothing like it.

What People Are Saying

Vicki Gold Levi
"Steel Pier, the 'Capital of Americana,' was an entertainment destination never to be replicated. It deserves a book of its own!"--(Vicki Gold Levi, author of Atlantic City: One Hundred Twenty-Five Years of Ocean Madness, and co-founder of the Atlantic City Historical Museum)

AMCs Best Day Hikes in the Catskills and Hudson Valley or Italy

AMC's Best Day Hikes in the Catskills and Hudson Valley: Four-Season Guide to 60 of the Best Trails from New York City to Albany

Author: Peter W Kick

With more than 600 miles of trails within just a few hours of New York City, the Catskills and the Hudson River Valley are a hiker's paradise, boasting varied and scenic terrain from Westchester County to Albany. This new guide from the experts at the Appalachian Mountain Club leads beginner and experienced hikers alike along sixty of the region's most spectacular trails, from short family nature walks to day-long hikes that reward with magnificent views. Each trip description includes a detailed map and a summary of the trip time, distance, and difficulty, plus an icon indicating whether the trail is also good for snowshoeing or cross-country. The guide includes appendices packed with snowshoe treks, rock climbing in the Gunks, and other opportunities for outdoor adventure in the region, making this guide an essential four-season reference for locals and visitors alike.

Special features include:
Fifty day hikes for all ability levels, ranging from two to eight miles long
Detailed and accurate trail descriptions
Locator map and "At-A-Glance" highlights chart for easy trip comparison and planning
Hiking and safety tips
Detailed maps showing parking areas, trails, and natural highlights
Nature Notes about prominent species, and unique natural features of each hike
Photographs of plant and animal life reflecting each trip's hidden wonders

Interesting textbook: Cornucopia or Indian

Italy (Little-Known Facts About Well-Known Places)

Author: David Hoffman

Did you know?

• Giorgio Armani designed the uniforms worn by members of the Italian Air Force.
• Shakespeare used Italian settings in at least thirteen of his plays, yet he never once traveled there.
• Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms, which is set in northeast Italy during World War I, is credited with bringing the word ciao into the English language.
• Vatican City has its own currency.

In this follow-up to the popular Little-Known Facts About Well-Known Stuff, David Hoffman delves into the stories behind some of our favorite places. Little-Known Facts about Well-Known Places goes beyond the obvious to reveal the tidbits that we have yet to discover. Covering every aspect— from food, film, and fashion to people, history, and art—these collections of offbeat facts and figures are guaranteed to delight a first-time visitor and surprise even the most jaded local. Packed with a wealth of revelations, Little-Known Facts about Well-Known Places is a must-have for know-it-alls, information addicts, curious readers, armchair travelers, and pop culture junkies of all ages.

Fodors Germany 2009 or The Voyage of the Beagle

Fodor's Germany 2009

Author: Fodors Travel Publications Inc Staff

Fodor’s. For Choice Travel Experiences.

Fodor’s helps you unleash the possibilities of travel by providing the insightful tools you need to experience the trips you want. Although you’re at the helm, Fodor’s offers the assurance of our expertise, the guarantee of selectivity, and the choice details that truly define a destination. It’s like having a friend in Germany!

•Updated annually, Fodor’s Germany provides the most accurate and up-to-date information available in a guidebook.

•Fodor’s Germany features options for a variety of budgets, interests, and tastes, so you make the choices to plan your trip of a lifetime.

•If it’s not worth your time, it’s not in this book. Fodor’s discriminating ratings, including our top tier Fodor’s Choice designations, ensure that you’ll know about the most interesting and enjoyable places in Germany.

•Experience Germany like a local! Fodor’s Germany includes choices for every traveler, from hiking in the Bavarian Alps to museum-hopping in Dresden and clubbing in Berlin, and much more!

•Indispensable, customized trip planning tools include “Top Reasons to Go,” “Word of Mouth” advice from other travelers, and tips to help save money, bypass lines, and avoid common travel pitfalls.

Visit Fodors.com for more ideas and information, travel deals, vacation planning tips, reviews and to exchange travel advice with other travelers.

Book review: Heart of a Woman or Miladys Art Science of Nail Technology

The Voyage of the Beagle (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

Author: Charles Darwin

"I hate every wave of the ocean," the seasick Charles Darwin wrote to his family during his five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. It was this world-wide journey, however, that launched the scientist's career.

The Voyage of the Beagle is Darwin's fascinating account of his trip - of his biological and geological observations and collection activities, of his speculations about the causes and theories behind scientific phenomena, of his interactions with various native peoples, of his beautiful descriptions of the lands he visited, and of his amazing discoveries in the Galapagos archipelago. Although scientific in nature, the literary quality rivals those of John Muir and Henry Thoreau.

About the Author:
Charles Darwin is the author of one of the most controversial and influential works in Western thought, The Origin of the Species (1859). At age twenty-two, Darwin, who had dropped out of medical school in Edinburgh, became the gentleman companion (and only secondarily, naturalist) to the moody, irascible Captain Robert FitzRoy. Although his father had wanted him to become a pastor, Darwin's journey on the H.M.S. Beagle led to him instead becoming the forerunner of evolutionary theory.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction	xv
	Preface
Chapter 1	St. Jago--Cape de Verd Islands	1
Chapter 2	Rio de Janeiro	16
Chapter 3	Maldonado	34
Chapter 4	Rio Negro to Bahia Blanca	55
Chapter 5	Bahia Blanca	71
Chapter 6	Bahia Blanca to Buenos Ayres	93
Chapter 7	Buenos Ayres and St. Fe	108
Chapter 8	Banda Oriental and Patagonia	125
Chapter 9	Santa Cruz, Patagonia, and the Falkland Islands	156
Chapter 10	Tierra Del Fuego	180
Chapter 11	Strait of Magellan--Climate of the Southern Coasts	204
Chapter 12	Central Chile	224
Chapter 13	Chiloe and Chonos Islands	242
Chapter 14	Chiloe and Concepcion: Great Earthquake	259
Chapter 15	Passage of the Cordillera	279
Chapter 16	Northern Chile and Peru	300
Chapter 17	Galapagos Archipelago	331
Chapter 18	Tahiti and New Zealand	358
Chapter 19	Australia	383
Chapter 20	Keeling Island:--Coral Formations	402
Chapter 21	Mauritius to England	429

Paris to the Moon or Australia 2009

Paris to the Moon

Author: Adam Gopnik

Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner--in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans.

In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades--but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and beautiful. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café--a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive.

So, in the grand tradition of the American abroad, Gopnik walked the paths of the Tuileries, enjoyed philosophical discussions at his local bistro, wrote as violet twilight fell on the arrondissements. Of course, as readers of Gopnik's beloved and award-winning "Paris Journals" in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with day-to-day, not-so-fabled life. Evenings with French intellectuals preceded middle-of-the-night baby feedings; afternoons were filled with trips to the Musée d'Orsay and pinball games; weekday leftovers were eaten while three-star chefs debated a "culinary crisis."

As Gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes ofnavigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys--both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. "We went to Paris for a sentimental reeducation-I did anyway-even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which I believe is why they call it an education."

Le Point Magazine

Without doubt the most influential translator of French culture to the United States.

Book Magazine

Who wouldn't want Gopnik's job? Take your family to Paris for five years, watch your infant son become fluent in French, spend your days eating and drinking and interviewing chefs and fashion models, then write up an occasional report for The New Yorker. Gopnik's collected essays about his five years in Paris are filled with delight. While predictable in his appreciation of Parisian beauty and charm, Gopnik is several cuts above many others writing about Europe's romantic appeal. Gopnik knows cuisine, haute couture, politics and sports, and he uncovers larger cultural truths through simple domestic experience. His comical effort to join a Parisian health club, where women on treadmills move at window-shopping speed, leads to his realization, "The absence of the whole rhetoric and cult of sports and exercise is the single greatest difference between daily life in France and daily life in America." An elegant stylist and master of metaphor and description, Gopnik's observations are incisive and original. Such as when he links his feelings about his first delectable meal in Paris, when he was a teen, to those of Stendhal after his initial visit to a brothel: "I knew that it could be done, but I didn't know there was a place on any corner where you could walk in, pay three dollars, and get it." Some might find Gopnik's touch too light, too boureois, perhaps even too self-satisfied. Still, this is an eloquent book about an American's romance with Paris, that seductive city which lures us in, yet excludes us from its inner circles.
—James Schiff

Publishers Weekly

In this collection of 23 essays and journal entries, many of which were originally published in the New Yorker, Gopnik chronicles the time he spent in Paris between 1995 and 2000. Although his subjects are broad -- global capitalism, American economic hegemony, France's declining role in the world -- he approaches each one via the tiny, personal details of his life as a married expatriate with a small child. In "The Rules of the Sport," he explores the maddening, hilarious intricacies of French bureaucracy by way of a so-called New York-style gym, where his efforts to become a member encounter a wall of meetings, physical examinations and paperwork. Many of the entries, such as "The Fall of French Cooking," focus on how Paris is coping with the loss of its cultural might, and look at others of the inexorable changes brought on by global capitalism. "The Balzar Wars" describes a mini-revolt staged by a group of Parisians (including the author) when their local, family-owned brasserie is purchased by a restaurant tycoon. Throughout, Gopnik is unabashedly sentimental about Paris, yet he never loses the objectivity of his outsider's eye. His "macro in the micro" style sometimes seems a convenient excuse to write about himself, but elegantly woven together with the larger issues facing France, those personal observations beautifully convey a vision of Paris and its prideful, abstract-thinking, endlessly fascinating inhabitants. Although the core readership for this book will most likely be loyal New Yorker subscribers, its thoughtful, funny portrayal of French life give it broad appeal to Francophiles unfamiliar with Gopnik's work. (Oct.)

Library Journal

In fall 1995, Gopnick, an art and cultural critic for The New Yorker, moved to Paris with his wife and young son, Luke. His reports from the city, published regularly in the magazine, proved to be fluent and witty, delightful fodder for anyone who loves Paris or has ever dreamed of living abroad. Those pieces, collected here, constitute more than a memoir of one American's struggles to adjust to French ways (though Gopnick was not completely out of his depth, having lived briefly in Paris as a child). True, the essays take the intimate and everyday as their genesis, covering, for instance, Gopnick's attempts to sign up at a "New York-style" health club, taking Luke to puppet shows and the carousel, visiting the new Bibliotheque National or the "dinosaur museum," struggling with French Christmas tree lights, and fighting to keep a favorite restaurant alive. But these are just starting points for deeper reflections on what it means to be French, to be American, and simply to be alive at the close of the 20th century. Gopnick's essays do what the best writing should do: they inform as they entertain. Highly recommended.--Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"

New York Times Book Review - Alain De Botton

[T]he finest book on France of recent years. . . . The distinctive brilliance of Gopnik's essays lies in his ability to pick up a subject one would never have imagined it possible to think deeply about and then cover it in thoughts . . .

Kirkus Reviews

A talented essayist for the New Yorker pens a love letter to the City of Lights, praising Paris to the moon (though that's not the original meaning of the title).

What People Are Saying

Francine Du Plessix Gray
The chronicle of an American writer's lifelong infatuation with Paris is also an extended meditation--in turn hilarious and deeply moving--on the threat of globalization, the art of parenting and the civilizing intimacy of family life. Whether he's writing about the singularity of the Papon trial, the glory of bistro cuisine, the wacky idiosyncrasies of French kindergartens, or the vexing bureaucracy of Parisian health clubs, Gopnik's insights are infused with a formidable cultural intelligence, and his prose is as pellucid as that of any essayist. A brilliant, exhilarating book.

Malcolm Gladwell
Adam Gopnik is a dazzling talent--hilarious, winning, and deft--but the surprise of Paris to the Moon is its quiet, moral intelligence. This book begins as journalism and ends up as literature.

Jeffrey Toobin
Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon abounds in the sensuous delights of the city—the magical carousel in the Luxembourg Gardens, the tomato dessert at Arpege, even the exquisite awfulness of the new state library. But the even greater joys of this exquisite memoir are timeless and even placeless—the excitement of the journey, the confusion of an outsider, and, most of all, the love of a family."

John Updike
Adam Gopnik's avid intelligence and nimble pen found subjects to love in Paris and in the growth of his small American family there. A conscientious, scrupulously savvy American husband and father meets contemporary France, and fireworks result, lighting up not just the Eiffel Tower.

Look this: Bos Lasting Lessons or Total Leadership

Australia 2009

Author: Fodors Travel Publications Inc Staff

Fodor’s. For Choice Travel Experiences.

Fodor’s helps you unleash the possibilities of travel by providing the insightful tools you need to experience the trips you want. While you’re at the helm, Fodor’s offers the assurance of our expertise, the guarantee of selectivity, and the choice details that truly define a destination. It’s like having a friend in Australia!

•Updated annually, Fodor’s Australia 2009 provides the most accurate and up-to-date information available in a guide book.

•Fodor’s Australia features options for a variety of budgets, interests, and tastes, so you make the choices to plan your trip of a lifetime.

•If it’s not worth your time, it’s not in this book. Fodor’s discriminating ratings, including our top tier Fodor’s Choice designations, ensure that you’ll know about the most interesting and enjoyable places in Australia.

•Experience Australia like a local! Fodor’s Australia 2009 features information from local experts.

•Indispensable, customized trip planning tools include “Top Reasons to Go,” “Word of Mouth” advice from other travelers, and tips to help save money, bypass lines, and avoid common travel pitfalls.

•Crisp, clean maps with more depth and detail to make it easier than ever to sail in, out, and around town.


Visit Fodors.com for more ideas and information, travel deals, vacation planning tips, reviews and to exchange travel advice with other travelers.

Table of Contents:

Sydney     27
Exploring Sydney     28
Beaches     60
Where to Eat     66
Where to Stay     80
Nightlife & the Arts     88
Sports & the Outdoors     94
Shopping     97
Sydney Essentials     102
New South Wales     114
The Blue Mountains     119
The Hunter Valley     132
The North Coast     139
Lord Howe Island     152
The Snowy Mountains     158
Canberra & the A.C.T.     169
Exploring Canberra     170
Where to Eat     179
Where to Stay     184
Nightlife & the Arts     187
Sports & the Outdoors     189
Shopping     189
Canberra Essentials     190
Melbourne     194
Exploring Melbourne     195
Where to Eat     208
Where to Stay     216
Nightlife & the Arts     222
Sports & the Outdoors     226
Shopping     228
Melbourne Essentials     233
Victoria     239
Around Melbourne     241
WestCoast Region     254
The Gold Country & the Grampians     265
Murray River Region     274
Tasmania     284
Hobart     289
Side Trips from Hobart     298
Port Arthur & the Tasman Peninsula     302
Freycinet National Park & East-Coast Resorts     304
Launceston     307
The Northwest & Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park     313
The West Coast     318
Tasmania Essentials     321
Queensland     328
Brisbane     333
The Gold Coast     357
The Sunshine Coast & Airlie Beach     374
Fraser Island     391
Townsville & Magnetic Island     400
Cairns     410
North from Cairns     426
The Great Barrier Reef     442
Mackay-Capricorn Islands     446
The Whitsunday Islands     455
North Coast Islands     471
Great Barrier Reef Essentials     479
Adelaide & South Australia     484
Adelaide     487
The Barossa Region     510
The Clare Valley     519
Fleurieu Peninsula      523
Kangaroo Island     528
The Outback     534
The Red Centre     539
Alice Springs     542
Side Trips from Alice Springs     551
Uluru & Kata Tjuta     552
The Red Centre Essentials     562
Darwin, the Top End & the Kimberley     566
Darwin     571
Kakadu National Park     586
The Kimberley     590
Perth & Western Australia     603
Perth     607
Fremantle & Rottnest Island     630
The South West     640
Monkey Mia & Ningaloo Reef     654
Adventure Vacations     661
Australia Essentials     678
Getting Started     679
Booking Your Trip     683
Transportation     685
On The Ground     691
Index     702
About Our Writers     720

Rick Steves Spanish Phrase Book and Dictionary or Eiger Dreams

Rick Steves' Spanish Phrase Book and Dictionary

Author: Rick Steves

From ordering tapas in Madrid to making new friends in Costa del Sol, it helps to speak some of the native tongue. Rick Steves, bestselling author of travel guides to Europe, offers well-tested phrases and key words to cover every situation a traveler is likely to encounter. This handy guide provides key phrases for use in everyday circumstances, complete with phonetic spelling; an English-Spanish and Spanish-English dictionary; the latest information on European currency and rail transportation, and even a tear-out cheat sheet for continued language practice as you wait in line at the Guggenheim Bilbao. Informative, concise, and practical, Rick Steves' Spanish Phrase Book and Dictionary is an essential item for any traveler's mochila.

Eiger Dreams: Ventures among Men and Mountains

Author: Jon Krakauer

No one writes about mountaineering and its attendant hardships and victories more brilliantly than critically acclaimed author Jon Krakauer. In this collection of his finest work from such magazines as Outside and Smithsonian, he explores the subject from the unique and memorable perspective of one who has battled peaks like K2, Denali, Everest, and, of course, the Eiger. Always with a keen eye, an open heart, and a hunger for the ultimate experience, he gives us unerring portraits of the mountaineering experience.

Yet Eiger Dreams is more about people than about rock and ice—people with that odd, sometimes maniacal obsession with mountain summits that sets them apart from other men and women. Here we meet John Gill, climber not of great mountains but of house-sized boulders so hard to surmount that even demanding alpine climbs seem easy by comparison, and many more compelling and colorful characters.

Eiger Dreams is stirring, vivid writing about one of the most enthralling and dangerous of all human pursuits.

Population or Camping With The Corps Of Engineers

Population: 485

Author: Michael Perry

Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin, where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, Population: 485 is a comic and sometimes heartbreaking true tale leavened with quieter meditations on an overlooked America.

Camping with the Corps of Engineers: The Complete Guide to Campgrounds Owned and Operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Author: S L Hinkl

Contains directions and details about every campground in America operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Listings include camping fees, facilities, activities, RV size limits, open dates. All sites located on or near lakes or streams. The only book of its kind.

New York 400 or The Snow Leopard

New York 400: A Visual History of America's Greatest City with Images from The Museum of the City of New York

Author: The Museum of the City of New York

The year 2009 is a landmark in the history of New York, and America. It’s the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival along the river that bears his name. With public initiatives and media attention on commemorative events and exhibits at a fever pitch throughout the year, the stage is set for New York 400, a one-of-a-kind celebration of the greatest city in America.

With unprecedented access to the Museum of the City of New York’s vast archive, this is a visual history of the city of New York like none other, focusing not merely on landmarks but also on everyday life in the city over the past four centuries. The people, arts, culture, politics, and drama unfold through hundreds of rarely seen photographs and a fascinating profile of the city that never sleeps. Featuring essays from leading historians of the distinct epochs of Gotham, this volume takes us from the days of Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant in the seventeenth century through to mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg in the modern melting pot that is New York in the twenty-first century.

The Museum of the City of New York has a unique mandate—to explore the past, present, and future of New York, and to celebrate the city’s heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation. Its unparalleled collections, including photography, sculpture, costumes, toys, and decorative arts, enable the museum to present a variety of exhibitions, public programs, and publications investigating what gives New York its singular character.

The Snow Leopard

Author: Peter Matthiessen

An unforgettable spiritual journey through the Himalayas— now celebrating its thirtieth anniversary

IN 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Z en Buddhism, was also on a spiritual quest—to find the Lama of Shey at the ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. As the climb proceeds, Matthiessen charts his inner path as well as his outer one, with a deepening Buddhist understanding of reality, suffering, impermanence, and beauty.

The Nation - Jim Harrison

A magical book, a kind of lunar paradigm and map of the sacred.

The Washington Post Book World

Stunning . . . Fiercely felt and magnificently written.

A Shadow Falls or The Perfect Storm

A Shadow Falls

Author: Nick Brandt

Nick Brandt's unforgettable photographs in A Shadow Falls, a much anticipated collection of new work created since the publication of his enormously successful On this Earth (2005), portray the great animals of East Africa. Brandt comes to lions, elephants, giraffes, and gorillas with the same empathy that other artists reserve for human subjects. His photographs, writes Jane Goodall, arouse deep emotions. It's almost impossible to look through his work without sensing  the personalities of the beings whom he has photographed.  Out of this yearning for communion with our closest relatives in nature, Brandt achieves images that are, in the words of photographer Mary Ellen Mark, both Òepic and iconic. A Shadow Falls reproduces 58 neverbefore-published images in stunning, oversized tritone plates. Philosopher Peter Singer and photography historian Vicki Goldberg explore the significance of  Brandt's photographs, and Brandt gives his own account of his work in Africa.

The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea

Author: Sebastian Junger

It was the storm of the century—a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it "the perfect storm."

When it struck in October, 1991, there was virtually no warning. "She's comin' on, boys, and she's comin' on strong," radioed Captain Billy Tyne of the Andrea Gail from off the coast of Nova Scotia. Soon afterward, the boat and its crew of six disappeared without a trace.

The Perfect Storm is a real-life thriller, a stark and compelling journey into the dark heart of nature that leaves listeners with a breathless sense of what it feels like to be caught, helpless, in the grip of a force beyond understanding or control.

Penny Smith

The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger is brilliant. I've given it to all my friends. It's got everything, drama, pathos, terror on the high seas, and then the exciting build-up to the crescendo with the 100 foot waves. — Cover Magazine

Anthony Bailey

...thrilling -- a boat ride into and (for us) out of a watery hell. -- New York Times Book Review

Philadelphia Inquirer

Takes readers into the maelstrom and shows nature's splendid and dangerous havoc at its utmost.

Boston Globe

Mesmerizing....Packs an emotional wallop.

LA Times Book Review

A wild ride that brilliantly captures the awesome power of the raging sea.

Washington Post Book World

Superb...told with authority, brio, and deep sympathy for those in peril on the sea.

Publishers Weekly

In meteorological jargon, a "perfect storm" is one unsurpassed in ferocity and duration a description that fits the so-called Halloween Gale of October 1991 in the western Atlantic. Junger, who has written for American Heritage and Outside, masterfully handles his account of that storm and its devastation. He begins with a look at the seedy town of Gloucester, Mass., which has been sliding downhill ever since the North Atlantic fishing industry declined, then focuses his attention on the captain and the five-man crew of the Andrea Gail, a swordfishing vessel. He then charts the storm particularly formidable because three storms had converged from the south, the west and the north that created winds up to 100 miles an hour and waves that topped 110 feet. He reconstructs what the situation must have been aboard the ship during the final hours of its losing battle with the sea, and the moments when it went down with the loss of all hands. He recaps the courageous flight of an Air National Guard helicopter, which had to be ditched in the ocean leaving one man dead while the other four were rescued then returns to Gloucester and describes the reaction to the loss of the Andrea Gail. Even with the inclusion of technical information, this tale of the Storm of the Century is a thrilling read and seems a natural for filming.

School Library Journal

The powerfully destructive forces of nature that created the Halloween Gale of 1991 are made vivid through interviews with survivors, families, and Coast Guard rescue crews. True adventure at its best

Entertainment Weekly

Guaranteed to blow readers away...A+.

Washington Post Book World

Superb...told with authority, brio, and deep sympathy for those in peril on the sea.

Kirkus Reviews

The experience of being caught at sea in the maw of a 'perfect' storm (that is, one formed of an almost unique combination of factors), a monstrous tempest that couldn't get any worse, is spellbindingly captured by Junger. It's late October 1991, and the Andrea Gail, a fishing boat out of Gloucester, Mass., is making its way home from the Grand Banks with a crew of six, 40,000 pounds of swordfish, and a short market promising big returns. Coming to meet the boat is a hurricane off Bermuda, a cold front coming down from the Canadian Shield, and a storm brewing over the Great Lakes. Things get ugly quickly, unexpectedly. The Andrea Gail is never seen again, lost to 100-foot waves and winds topping 120 miles per hour. Junger builds his story around the vessel; he starts with biographies of the deckhands and the captain, and gives as complete an account of the boat's time at sea as he can dredge up, so readers feel an immediate stake in its fate. Since it is unknown exactly how the Andrea Gail sank, and because Junger wanted to know what it was like for the men during their last hours, he details the horrific tribulations of a sailboat caught in the storm, the rescue of the three aboard it by the Coast Guard, and the ditching of an Air National Guard helicopter after it ran out of fuel during another rescue operation. Junger's fine dramatic style is complemented by a wealth of details that flesh out the story: wave physics and water thermoclines; what it means if you see whitewater outside your porthole; where the terms mayday, ill-wind, and down East came from. Reading this gripping book is likely to make the would-be sailor feel both awed and a little frightened bynature's remorseless power.

What People Are Saying

Patrick O'Brian
One feels the absolutely enormous strength of the hurricane winds and the incredibly towering mass of the hundred-foot waves.

Traveling with Pomegranates or A Walk in the Woods

Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Memoir

Author: Sue Monk Kidd

An introspective and beautiful dual memoir by the #1 New York Times bestselling novelist and her daughter

Sue Monk Kidd has touched millions of readers with her novels The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair and with her acclaimed nonfiction. In this intimate dual memoir, she and her daughter, Ann, offer distinct perspectives as a fifty-something and a twenty-something, each on a quest to redefine herself and to rediscover each other.

Between 1998 and 2000, Sue and Ann travel throughout Greece and France. Sue, coming to grips with aging, caught in a creative vacuum, longing to reconnect with her grown daughter, struggles to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel. Ann, just graduated from college, heartbroken and benumbed by the classic question about what to do with her life, grapples with a painful depression. As this modern-day Demeter and Persephone chronicle the richly symbolic and personal meaning of an array of inspiring figures and sites, they also each give voice to that most protean of connections: the bond of mother and daughter.

A wise and involving book about feminine thresholds, spiritual growth, and renewal, Traveling with Pomegranates is both a revealing self-portrait by a beloved author and her daughter, a writer in the making, and a momentous story that will resonate with women everywhere.

Publishers Weekly

Mother and daughter reconnect in this warm travelogue of a journey through Greece, Turkey and France. Both women are at crucial junctures in their lives (and both rely heavily on a tired Demeter-Persephone analogy for their relationship): Taylor, 22, is entering adulthood after recently graduating from college, and novelist Kidd is turning 50 and hitting menopause. Kidd mispronounces a number of words; Taylor reads with emotion, but her voice rises into an inappropriate question mark at the end of statements. Both have pleasant Southern accents with slightly gravely notes in their voices. Some listeners might enjoy the immediacy of hearing the authors read; most, however, will prefer the printed version. A Viking hardcover (Reviews, June 22) (Sept.)

Kirkus Reviews

The New Age odyssey of bestselling author Kidd (The Mermaid Chair, 2005, etc.) and her daughter Ann. In alternating chapters, the mother-daughter team recounts their different but parallel journeys of self-discovery. Mom found guidance in the regenerative myths of Demeter, Persephone and the Virgin Mary, while Ann, feeling confused and rudderless in her early 20s, wondered whether the power of Athena could help her unearth life's purpose. Sue, who grew up in upstate South Carolina and worked as a nurse during her early adult life, eventually found her writer's voice and moved with her husband to Charleston. Ann attended Columbia College (in South Carolina) and resolved to study Greek history after an inspiring group trip to Greece in the late '90s, but she was rejected from her ideal graduate program. During a subsequent trip to Greece to commemorate Sue's 50th birthday and Ann's college graduation, Ann felt depressed about her future just as Sue was hoping to find spiritual clues to the next phase of her life. Most of the book is devoted to their first trip to Greece in 1998, narrated first by Sue, then Ann, from Athens to Eleusis (the sanctuary of Demeter) to Ephesus, Turkey, where "Mary's House" is located. Both mother and daughter continually sound the themes of autonomy and self-realization. Yet while Sue hit on her life's mission to write a novel-which became the mega-selling The Secret Life of Bees (2002)-Ann returned home, got married and had a baby. Although she did find courage to apprentice as a writer, the letdown is palpable. A touching rapprochement between mother and daughter, but much of the writing is murky and both narratives sound curiously alike-won't deter the manyfans of Mom, however. Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh/William Morris Agency

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

Author: Bill Bryson

Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.

For a start there's the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa along for the walk. Despite Katz's overwhelming desire to find cozy restaurants, he and Bryson eventually settle into their stride, and while on the trail they meet a bizarre assortment of hilarious characters. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness to this beautiful but fragile trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is destined to become a modern classic of travel literature.

Forbes

Very funny...Bryson's humor is winning and succinct; he has a knack for boiling down his observations to their absurd essences.

National Geo Traveler

A laugh-out-loud account.

New York Times Book Review - Dwight Garner

[Bryson is] a satirist of the first rank, one who writes (and walks) with Chaucerian brio.

National Geographic Traveler

A laugh-out-loud account....If you were to cross John Muir's writings with Dave Barry's you'd end up with A Walk in the Woods.

National Geographic Traveler

A laugh-out-loud account....If you were to cross John Muir's writings with Dave Barry's you'd end up with A Walk in the Woods.

Geographic Traveler

National

Publishers Weekly

Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. Bryson (The Lost Continent) carries himself in an irresistibly bewildered manner, accepting each new calamity with wonder and hilarity. He reviews the characters of the AT (as the trail is called), from a pack of incompetent Boy Scouts to a perpetually lost geezer named Chicken John. Most amusing is his cranky, crude and inestimable companion, Katz, a reformed substance abuser who once had single-handedly "become, in effect, Iowa's drug culture." The uneasy but always entertaining relationship between Bryson and Katz keeps their walk interesting, even during the flat stretches. Bryson completes the trail as planned, and he records the misadventure with insight and elegance. He is a popular author in Britain and his impeccably graceful and witty style deserves a large American audience as well.

Steve Forbes - Forbes Magazine

A delightful, insightful, irreverent, oft-funny account of the writer's attempt to trek the 2,100-plus-mile Appalachian Trail. Hiking the Appalachian Trail is incredibly hard work, with grueling terrain, frequently intemperate weather, a heavy backpack and no comforting motels and amenities at the end of the day. It combines beauty with a heaviness that Bryson convincingly conveys. His observations on the people he encountered during this unique journey read as if Charles Dickens had become a scriptwriter for Saturday Night Live. (16 Apr 2001)

School Library Journal

Leisurely walks in the Cotswolds during a 20-year sojourn in England hardly prepared Bryson for the rigors of the Appalachian Trail. Nevertheless, he and his friend Katz, both 40-something couch potatoes, set out on a cold March morning to walk the 2000-mile trail from Georgia to Maine. Overweight and out of shape, Katz jettisoned many of his provisions on the first day out. The men were adopted by Mary Ellen, a know-it-all hiker eager to share her opinions about everything. They finally eluded her, encountered some congenial hikers, and after eight days of stumbling up and down mountains in the rain and mud, came to Gatlinburg, TN. Acknowledging they would never make it the whole way, they decided to skip the rest of the Smokies and head for the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia-by car. Late that summer, for their last hike, the pair attempted to hike the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, near the trail's end. They got separated and Bryson spent a day and night searching for his friend. When they finally were reunited, "...we decided to leave the endless trail and stop pretending we were mountain men because we weren't." This often hilarious account of the foibles of two inept adventurers is sprinkled with fascinating details of the history of the AT, its wildlife, and tales of famous and not-so-famous hikers. In his more serious moments, Bryson argues for the protection of this fragile strip of wilderness. Young Adults who enjoy the outdoors, and especially those familiar with the AT, will find this travelogue both entertaining and insightful.
-- Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA

The New York Times Book Review - Dwight Garner

[Bryson is] a satirist of the first rank, one who writes (and walks) with Chaucerian brio.

National Geographic Traveler

A laugh-out-loud account....If you were to cross John Muir's writings with Dave Barry's you'd end up with A Walk in the Woods.

Dwight Garner

Don't look to A Walk in the Woods for forced revelations about failed relationships or financial ruin or artistic insecurity. Bryson is hiking the trail because it's there, and he's great company right from the start -- a lumbering, droll, neatnik intellectual who comes off as equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley and (given his fondness for gross-out humor) Dave Barry. -- New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

The Appalachian Trail from Springer Mountain, GA, to Mount Katahdin, ME consists of some five million steps, and Bryson (Notes from a Small Island, 1996) seems to coax a laugh, and often an unexpectedly startling insight, out of each one he traverses. It's not all yuks though it is hard not to grin idiotically through all 288 pages, for Bryson is a talented portraitist of place. He did his natural-history homework, which is to say he knows a jack-o-lantern mushroom from a hellbender salamander from a purple wartyback mussel, and can also write seriously about the devastation of chestnut blight. He laces his narrative with gobbets of trail history and local trivia, and he makes real the 'strange and palpable menace' of the dark deep woods in which he sojourns, the rough-hewn trailscape 'mostly high up on the hills, over lonely ridges and forgotten hollows that no one has ever used or coveted,' celebrating as well the 'low-level ecstasy' of finding a book left thoughtfully at a trail shelter, or a broom with which to sweep out the shelter's dross. Yet humor is where the book finds its cues—from Bryson's frequent trail companion, the obese and slothful Katz, a spacious target for Bryson's sly wit, to moments of cruel and infantile laughs, as when he picks mercilessly on the witless woman who, admittedly, ruined a couple of their days.

But for the most part the humor is bright sarcasm, flashing with drollery and intelligence, even when it's a far yodel from political sensitivity. Then Bryson will take your breath away with a trenchant critique of the irredeemably vulgar vernacular strip that characterizes many American downtowns, or of other signs of decay he encounters offthe trail (though the trail itself he comes to love). 'Walking is what we did,' Bryson states: 800-plus out of the 2,100-plus miles, and that good sliver is sheer comic travel entertainment.

What People Are Saying

Bill McKibben
Bill Bryson is an extremely funny man, the Appalachian Trail is an exceedingly magnificent place, and together they have created an exceedingly fine book.

Dwight Garner
Don't look to A Walk in the Woods for forced revelations about failed relationships or financial ruin or artistic insecurity. Bryson is hiking the trail because it's there, and he's great company right from the start -- a lumbering, droll, neatnik intellectual who comes off as equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley and (given his fondness for gross-out humor) Dave Barry.